{"id":4477,"date":"2016-03-04T17:03:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-31T19:05:44","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T00:05:44","slug":"dark-knight-iii-3-tops-comics-market-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/04\/dark-knight-iii-3-tops-comics-market-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Knight III #3 tops comics market in another sluggish winter month"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Preliminary reporting is available on comics and graphic novel sales in February 2016 from Diamond Comic Distributors<\/b><\/a>, and we see in them another month that is just slightly off from the same month a year ago. But since reported sales that month were supercharged<\/b><\/a> by nearly half a million copies of Orphan Black<\/i> #1<\/b>, the vast majority of which went to the repackager Loot Crate, the month may not have been off by that much.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Comichron estimates that while total orders were at $41.48 million, down about $700,000 from last February, our retail total from last year was inflated by nearly $2 million by the Loot Crate book. We can also estimate that much of the drop in unit sales came from the Loot Crate issue: half a million copies would equate to about half of the reported 14.62% drop in comics unit sales. And remember that last February also had more Star Wars<\/b><\/i> launches, including continued sales of the first issue from last January.<\/p>\n

So the comparisons for the first quarter are the muddle we’d been expecting, and may not say much at all about the health of the market as 2016 began. The aggregate changes:<\/p>\n

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